Category Archives: Isager

Isager Highland is our October yarn of the month, which means you can buy the yarn all month at a 10% discount (20% for Sunspun members).

If you’ve been to the store, you’d know we love Isager yarns from Denmark. Highland is produced in Peru and this sportweight, pure wool yarn is all that you’ve come to expect from Isager – grown under strict environmental conditions and minimally processed.

Each 50 g ball of the plied yarn yields 280 metres, which goes a long, long way. The yarn itself is light and strong, and the full range of colours is lightly heathered. Because of its weight, it can be stranded with other Isager yarns to create one-off fabrics.

Highland is good to work with. While not buttery soft, it feels good0 in the hand. The plies are tight enough that they don’t catch (I used Addis), and sticky enough to have some memory (very handy if you need to rip back). The Highland fabric blooms, transforms and relaxes into a garment or accessory with beautiful drape when blocked. Depending on gauge, it can also grow when blocked, so if the item looks small when you’re knitting, don’t fret too much. Be sure to swatch beforehand to check your gauge.

This is one of those enormously versatile yarns, yielding ethereally light lace on the one hand and blending beautifully for colourwork items.

The magic of blocking. The Daffodil cardigan in Highland: left shows the
back (blocked) and right is the unblocked sleeve.

Here are a few quick ideas that show off the yarn’s best features.

Knit n Slide is a Stephen West semicircular shawl with a lacy border and beautiful scallops. There are some stunning examples on Ravelry, and colours can be as dramatic or complementary as you like.

Halligarth by Gudrun Johnston is a woodland shawl featuring a traditional lace motif. Two skeins should make a shawlette, and four will give you a large shawl.

Finally, to return to first principles, two patterns created by Helga Isager: Vivi, a colourwork pattern, and the Daffodil cardigan. Daffodil cardigan is soon to be a sample instore, so drop by soon to have a look. Ours was knit in three balls.